Parrot and Sailboat (#98) 1980

Jo Ann Callis made this photograph, ‘Parrot and Sailboat (#98)’, without a specified date using photography. I love the cool but vibrant colour palette. It makes the image feel fresh but artificial. There’s a lot to unpack here, but first, that parrot! Look how he is staring intently at that little boat as if he’s never seen one before. It’s such a simple scene, yet so intriguing. The composition is pretty straightforward – a parrot, a sailboat in a bathtub, a bar of soap floating in the background – but it’s the unexpectedness of the grouping that gets you. Callis lets the photograph be what it is without dressing it up too much. It reminds me a little of David Hockney’s images, these images share a similar vision or interest in the everyday. Callis has an innate sense of colour and composition, she allows the colours and objects within the image to speak for themselves. As with most great art, it embraces the ambiguous over the definitive.